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      Decoding Kyrsten Sinema’s Style

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      Sometimes a dress is just a dress. Sometimes it’s a strategy.Senator Kyrsten Sinema may have been in Europe recently on a fund-raising trip and out of reach of the activists who have dogged her footsteps, frustrated with her obstruction of President Biden’s social spending bill. But despite the fact her office has been keeping her itinerary under wraps, were those protesters able to follow her overseas, there’s a good chance they would be able to find her.Not just because of her political theater. Ever since she was first elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2005, Ms. Sinema has always stood out in a crowd. And as Ms. Sinema’s legislative demands take center stage (along with those of Senator Joe Manchin, the other Biden Bill holdout) her history of idiosyncratic outfits has taken on a new cast.As Tammy Haddad, former MSNBC political director and co-founder of the White House Correspondents Weekend Insider, said of the senator, “If the other members of Congress had paid any attention to her clothing at all they would have known she wasn’t going to just follow the party line.”The senior senator from Arizona — the first woman to represent Arizona in the Senate, the first Democrat elected to that body from that state since 1995, and the first openly bisexual senator — has never hidden her identity as a maverick. In fact, she’s advertised it. Pretty much every day.Indeed, it was back in 2013, when she was first elected to the House of Representatives, that Elle crowned Ms. Sinema “America’s Most Colorful Congresswoman.” Since she joined the Senate, she has merely been further embracing that term. Often literally.Notice was served at her swearing-in on Jan. 3, 2019, when Ms. Sinema seemed to be channeling Marilyn Monroe in platinum blond curls, a white sleeveless pearl-trimmed top, rose-print pencil skirt and stiletto heels: She was never going to revert to pantsuit-wearing banality.Senator Sinema leaves the Senate reception room at the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump in 2020, her cape sweeping behind.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesInstead, she swept in as a white-cape-dressed crusader for Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, in January 2020. Modeled a variety of Easter-egg colored wigs — lavender, pink, green — to demonstrate, her spokeswoman Hannah Hurley told The Arizona Republic in May of last year, a commitment to “social distancing in accordance with best practices, including from salons.” (Ms. Hurley specified the wig cost $12.99.) Sported pompom earrings, a variety of animal prints, neoprene, and assorted thigh-high boots. And presided over the Senate on Feb. 23 of this year while wearing a hot pink sweater with the words “Dangerous Creature” on the front, prompting Mitt Romney to tell her she was “breaking the internet.”Her reply: “Good.”To dismiss that as a stunt rather than a foreshadowing is to give Ms. Sinema less credit than she is due. “She’s saying, ‘I can wear what I want and say what I think is important and I’m going to have a lot of impact doing it,’” Ms. Haddad said. “She is unencumbered by the norms of the institution.”Lauren A. Rothman, an image and style accountability coach in Washington who has been working with members of Congress for 20 years, said it’s part of a growing realization among politicians that “you are communicating at all times, because a clip on social media can be even more meaningful than something on national TV.” And that means “thinking at all times about what story you are telling with your nonverbal tools, which means your style.”As Washington has begun to realize. Conversation with various insiders and Congressologists offered theories on the wardrobe that suggested it was either: a sleight-of-hand, meant to distract from Ms. Sinema’s journey from progressive to moderate to possibly Republican-leaning; or meant to offer reassurance to her former progressive supporters that she wasn’t actually part of the conservative establishment.Richard Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School and the author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Changed History,” said he thought her image was designed to telegraph: “I’m a freethinker, my own person, not going along with convention, so even though I’m a part of the Democratic Party I am representing your interests, not theirs.” (As it happens Ms. Sinema is featured in the book as an example of a woman “unapologetically” bringing a more feminine approach to dress to “the halls of power.”)Whatever the interpretation, however, no one expressed any doubt that she knew exactly what she was doing. To pay attention is simply to acknowledge what Ms. Haddad called “a branding exercise” being done “at the highest level.” Either way, the senator’s office did not respond to emails on the subject.Senator Sinema in non-traditional silver talking with Senator Thom Tillis in traditional dark suit in 2020.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressSenator Sinema in the U.S. Capitol Building in 2020.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesAnother of Senator Sinema’s wigs, which came in a variety of Easter egg shades. This one matches the large flower on her dress.Pool photo by Tom WilliamsSenator Sinema stood out like a beacon in a bright red halter dress, blue beads, and an apple watch during a news conference in July.Alex Wong/Getty ImagesAfter all, said Hilary Rosen, the vice chair of the political consultancy SKDKickerbocker, who has known Ms. Sinema since 2011, the senator “used to dress more like the rest of us, in simple dresses” and the occasional suit jacket. But, Ms. Rosen said, “I’ve seen a real shift in the last few years, and I think they way she dresses now is a sign of her increasing confidence as a legislator. She’s not afraid to wear her personality on her sleeve, and that’s rare in a politician. They usually dress for ambiguity.”There are few places, after all, more hidebound when it comes to personal style than Congress, which long had a dress code that included the caveat that congresswomen were not supposed to show their shoulders or arms in the building. The House changed its rules in 2017, but the Senate hewed to tradition until Ms. Sinema’s election; the rules were actually changed for her.According to Jennifer Steinhauer’s book “The Firsts: the Inside Story of the Women Reshaping Congress,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, the senior member on the Senate Rules Committee, went to leadership before the last swearing-in to request the rules be reconsidered to reflect the modern world. She knew Ms. Sinema, a triathlete, had a penchant for showing her arms, and believed the new senator “needed to be allowed to wear what she wanted” in her new workplace. Some male senators grumbled, but acceded. (In the end, Ms. Sinema compromised by carrying a silver faux-fur stole to cover her shoulders.)But for women, Capitol Hill is traditionally a land of Talbots and St. John’s; of dressing to camouflage yourself in the group so it is your words that stand out, not your clothes. As Mr. Ford said, “Women are always subject to heightened scrutiny and criticism,” and in Washington this is even more true.There’s a reason Kamala Harris, the first female vice president, seems to wear only dark pantsuits. A reason the Women’s Campaign School at Yale Law, an annual five-day intensive training course for female elected officials hosted by the school (though not administered by it), includes a seminar entitled “Dress to Win.” Any woman in the political public eye has to make a decision about her clothes, whether she likes it or not, and resorting to the most nondescript common denominator is the norm.Senator Sinema, on the second day of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial at the U.S. Capitol in February, modeling message dressing.Pool photo by Joshua RobertsSenator Sinema on Capitol Hill in September in tiger stripes, though not the kind normally seen in nature.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesSenator Sinema in September, this time in a sort of cow print.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesYet more wild animal imagery, courtesy of the sweater Senator Sinema wore for a vote in the Capitol in March.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesWhen statements have been made with dress, they have been made with clear intent, both individually — the flamethrower coat Nancy Pelosi wore when she faced down President Donald J. Trump over his border wall; her many face masks; her mace pin — and with critical mass, as when the women of the House wore white to Mr. Trump’s State of the Union in 2019 and 2020. However, such visual messaging remains the exception to the general rule (that’s part of what makes these moments stand out, and gives them their power).When fashion comes into play, it is more generally as a gesture of international diplomacy (where it is often left to the first lady to get fancy in the name of playing nice on a state visit) or national boosterism, using the political spotlight to promote local business and thus justify the choice of a designer name as a move to help the economy (see President Biden’s decision to wear Ralph Lauren to his swearing-in).Senator Sinema began her Washington career by breaking that tradition, clearly reveling in a seemingly endless wardrobe of eye-catching, idiosyncratic and colorful clothes speckled with flowers and zebra stripes: the kind more often labeled “fun” rather than, say, “sober” or “serious”; the kind that were unidentifiable in terms of provenance (where did she get them? where were they made? who knew?); the kind that are not unusual in civilian life, but stand out like neon lights under the rotunda of the Capitol; the kind that maybe call to mind an uninhibited co-worker with a zest for retail therapy at the mall. But that the senator continued to do so as she ascended the political ranks served two purposes.Everything’s coming up floral, as Senator Sinema leaves a closed-door bipartisan infrastructure meeting on Capitol Hill in June.Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressMore blooms on Senator Sinema in September.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesPuffed sleeves and poesies on Senator Sinema in September.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesIt made her nationally recognizable in a way very few new members of Congress are, and it placed her at the forefront of a social trend at a time when dress codes of all kinds are being reconsidered — and often left behind. (It’s no accident that the other congresswoman sworn in at the same time who has become a household name, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is equally good at using the tools of image making to craft her political message.)And, it made it clear she just wasn’t going to apologize for enjoying shopping. She clearly does a lot of it. So what? As far as she is concerned, she can have her stuff and substance too.In other words, all those seemingly kooky clothes that Ms. Sinema is wearing aren’t kooky at all. They’re signposts. And the direction they are pointing is entirely her way. More

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      Democrats Work to Sell an Unfinished Bill

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      As President Biden and his allies in Congress work to whittle down the size of their ambitious domestic plans, Democrats must sell a bill without knowing precisely what will be in it.ALLENTOWN, Pa. — When Representative Susan Wild, Democrat of Pennsylvania, accompanied Jill Biden, the first lady, to the Learning Hub, a newly established early education center whose walls were covered with vocabulary words in English and Spanish, on a recent Wednesday morning, Ms. Wild’s constituents were frank about the many unmet needs in their community.Jessica Rodriguez-Colon, a case manager with a local youth house, described the struggles of helping families find affordable housing with rent skyrocketing. Brenda Fernandez, the founder of a nonprofit focused on supporting formerly incarcerated women and survivors of domestic violence, explained the challenges of ensuring homes were available for those who needed them.Dr. Biden had a ready answer: “It’s a big part of the bill,” she said, turning in her seat to Ms. Wild. “Right, Susan?”Ms. Wild quickly agreed. The sprawling $3.5 trillion social safety net and climate package that the House compiled last month would address everything raised during the discussion. It would devote more than $300 billion to low-income and affordable housing, provide two free years of community college and help set up a universal prekindergarten program that could help places like the Learning Hub, which serves about 150 children and families through Head Start, the federal program for preschoolers.But left unmentioned was the uncertainty about whether any of that would survive and become law. A month after the House put together its bill, President Biden and Democrats in Congress have trimmed their ambitions. Facing unified Republican opposition and resistance to the cost of the measure by a handful of centrists in their party, led by Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Democrats are now working to scale back the package to around $2 trillion to ensure its passage through a Congress where they hold the thinnest of majorities.For Ms. Wild and other Democrats facing the toughest re-elections in politically competitive districts around the country, the ambiguity surrounding their marquee legislation makes for an unusual challenge outside of Washington: how to go about selling an agenda without knowing which components of it will survive the grueling legislative path to the president’s desk.Polls show that individual components of the legislation — including increasing federal support of paid leave, elder care and child care to expanding public education — are popular among voters. But beyond being aware of a price tag that is already shrinking, few voters can track what is still in contention to be part of the final package, as the process is shrouded in private negotiations.Representative Susan Wild, Democrat of Pennsylvania, during an interview in Allentown on Wednesday.Mark Makela for The New York Times“We don’t want to be having to come back to people later and say, ‘Well, we really liked that idea, but it didn’t make it into the final bill,’ — so it’s a challenge,” Ms. Wild said. “As the bill’s size continues to come down, you may be talking about something at any given time that’s not going to make it into the final product.”To get around Republican obstruction, Democrats are using a fast-track process known as reconciliation that shields legislation from a filibuster. That would allow it to pass the 50-50 Senate on a simple majority vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a tiebreaking vote.But it would still require the support of every Democratic senator — and nearly every one of their members in the House. Democratic leaders and White House officials have been haggling behind the scenes to nail down an agreement that could satisfy both Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema, who have been reluctant to publicly detail which proposals they want to see scaled back or jettisoned.Congressional leaders aim to finish their negotiations in time to act on the reconciliation bill by the end of October, when they also hope to move forward on another of Mr. Biden’s top priorities, a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that would be the largest investment in roads, bridges, broadband and other physical public works in more than a decade.“As with any bill of such historic proportions, not every member will get everything he or she wants,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, wrote to Democrats in a letter ahead of the chamber’s return on Monday. “I deeply appreciate the sacrifices made by each and every one of you.”It remains unclear which sacrifices will have to be made, with lawmakers still at odds over the best strategy for paring down the plan, let alone how to structure specific programs. The most potent plan to replace coal and gas-fired plants with wind, nuclear and solar energy, for example, is likely to be dropped because of Mr. Manchin’s opposition, but White House and congressional staff are cobbling together alternatives to cut emissions that could be added to the plan.Liberals remain insistent that the bill — initially conceived as a cradle-to-grave social safety net overhaul on par with the Great Society of the 1960s — include as many programs as possible, while more moderate lawmakers have called for large investments in just a few key initiatives.In the midst of the impasse, rank-and-file lawmakers have been left to return home to their constituents to try to promote a still-unfinished product that is shrouded in the mystery of private negotiations, all while explaining why a Democratic-controlled government has yet to deliver on promises they campaigned on.“I try to make sure that people know what I stand for, what my positions are, what I want for our community,” Ms. Wild said in an interview, ticking off provisions in the bill that would lower prescription drug costs, provide child care and expand public education. “But if it’s not guaranteed, I also try to make sure people understand that, so they don’t feel like I’ve promised something that’s not going to happen.”“That doesn’t always work,” she added. “Because you might think that something something’s in the bag, so to speak, and then all of a sudden, the rug gets pulled out from under you.”Karen Schlegel, who is retired, waited outside, hoping to see Dr. Biden in Allentown on Wednesday.Mark Makela for The New York TimesKaren Schlegel, 71, who waited outside the center with a mix of protesters shouting obscenities and eager onlookers waiting for a glimpse of Dr. Biden, said she remained in full support of Mr. Biden’s agenda. She blamed congressional Democrats for delaying the president’s plan.“He would be doing better if he had some support from Congress,” she said, carrying a hot pink sign professing love for both Bidens. “They better get a hustle on.”Even Dr. Biden, as she trailed from classroom to classroom to watch the students engage in interactive color and shape lessons — and perform an enthusiastic penguin-inspired dance — avoided weighing in on the specifics of the bill.“We already started when Joe got into office, and that’s what we’re fighting for,” Dr. Biden told the group, pointing to the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill that Democrats muscled through in March as evidence of the success of their agenda. “I’m not going to stop, nor is Joe, so I want you to have faith.”For lawmakers like Ms. Wild, time is of the essence. Many Democrats are already growing wary of the prospects of beginning their re-election campaigns, before voters have felt the tangible impacts of either the infrastructure bill or the reconciliation package.They will have to win over voters like Eric Paez, a 41-year-old events planner, who wants Democrats to deliver and has little patience for keeping track of the machinations on Capitol Hill standing in their way.“I need to come home and not think about politicians,” Mr. Paez, said, smoking a cigarette and waving to neighbors walking their dogs in the early evening as he headed home from work near the child care center. “They should be doing what we voted them in to do.” More

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      Money Floods the Race for Control of Congress, More Than a Year Early

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      The main House war chests for both Democrats and Republicans have a combined $128 million in the bank — more than double the sum at this point in 2020.A dizzying amount of money is already pouring into the battles for the House and the Senate more than a year before the 2022 elections, as Republicans are bullish on their chances to take over both chambers in the first midterm election under President Biden, given the narrow margins keeping Democrats in power.The two parties’ main war chests for the House total a combined $128 million — more than double the sum at this point in the 2020 cycle and far surpassing every other previous one. Top House members are now raising $1 million or more per quarter. And more than two dozen senators and Senate candidates topped that threshold.Candidate after candidate, and the parties themselves, are posting record-breaking sums, even as the shapes of most House districts nationwide remain in flux because of delays in the once-a-decade redrawing of boundaries.In Georgia, Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, raised more than $100,000 per day in the last three months for a $9.5 million haul. But his leading Republican rival, Herschel Walker, the former football player who was urged to run by former President Donald J. Trump, raised $3.7 million in a little more than a month, setting up a potentially bruising and expensive contest in that key state.Politicians in both parties are furiously racing to expand their online donor bases while simultaneously courting big checks from wealthy benefactors. At a Senate Republican retreat for big donors in Palm Beach, Fla., this week, Mr. Trump’s presence was a reminder of his continued perch at the center of the Republican Party — both in helping lure donations and in derailing whatever messaging party operatives have designed.“The donor community is waking up to the fact that the Republican Party has a historic opportunity in 2022, in spite of Trump continuing to talk about 2020,” said Scott Reed, a longtime Republican strategist.Money alone is rarely decisive in political races, especially when both parties are flush with cash. But the glut of political funding, detailed in Federal Election Commission reports filed on Friday by House and Senate candidates and announced by the parties, shows the growing stakes of American elections, where a single flipped Senate seat can shift trillions of dollars in federal spending.The country’s increasingly polarized electorate has been hyper-engaged in politics since the Trump era began, and the ease of channeling that energy into donations online is remaking how campaigns are funded. The online donation clearinghouses for the two parties, ActBlue and WinRed, processed a combined total of more than $450 million in the third quarter.The avalanche of cash could expand the 2022 political battlefield and result in an unrelenting wave of advertising aimed at Americans who live in swing districts and states.The ad wars have, in fact, already begun. Democratic- and Republican-linked groups are spending millions of dollars to shape public opinion on the spending package currently being debated in Congress.Among them is one Biden-aligned nonprofit group, Building Back Together, which said it had spent nearly $15 million on television ads in more than two dozen House districts and key states since July. This week, a Republican-aligned nonprofit group, One Nation, announced that it was beginning a $10 million ad campaign, urging three Democratic senators up for re-election in 2022 — in Nevada, Arizona and New Hampshire — to oppose the spending package.Senator Raphael Warnock raised more than $100,000 per day in the last three months, making him the top Democratic fund-raiser outside of congressional leaders.Damon Winter/The New York TimesAll told, more than $70 million has been spent since Sept. 1 on television ads related to the Biden legislative agenda, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Historically, the party out of power has done well in a new president’s first midterm election, and Republicans see rising inflation, missteps in Afghanistan and a softening in Mr. Biden’s approval rating as reasons for a sunny 2022 outlook.“We’ll have to really screw up to lose the House,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, referring to the Democrats’ narrow majority in that chamber. He said that recapturing the Senate, which is split evenly between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, would depend on recruiting more top-tier Republicans, such as Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.At the donor retreat in Florida, Mr. Graham said, “there was a sense of optimism that was as high as I’ve seen it.”In the House, the path to the majority is widely expected to be determined by suburban voters, who swung sharply toward the Democratic Party during the Trump administration.Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who has worked on House campaigns, noted that the central role of suburban terrain — the battlegrounds were more rural 15 years ago — had driven up the cost of campaigning. Buying ads to reach suburban voters requires advertising in pricier urban television markets.“The upside is the Democratic coalition is built around suburbs,” Mr. Ferguson said. “The downside is the resources to run in Philadelphia and Chicago and L.A. and Miami.”The National Republican Congressional Committee began this year with roughly $8 million less on hand than its Democratic counterpart but entered October with roughly $2 million more, as small digital contributions have accelerated for Republicans. Each group has raised well over $100 million this year.Representative Tom Emmer, the chairman of the Republican congressional committee, noted in a call with reporters that in the 2020 cycle, his party committee had not reached the $100 million threshold until February — five months later.Both the Senate and the House Republican campaign committees have leaned on hardball and sometimes deceptive tactics to boost their bottom lines, such as pre-checking boxes that automatically enroll donors in recurring monthly contributions and aggressively fostering guilt trips in supporters and questioning their allegiances.“You’re a traitor …” began one such House G.O.P. text earlier this week. “You abandoned Trump.”The text gave a false deadline of 17 minutes to donate. “This is your final chance to prove your loyalty or be branded a deserter,” it read.A fund-raising text message this week from the National Republican Congressional Committee.The House G.O.P. committee, which declined to comment on its tactics, said it had raised nearly 44 percent of its funds last quarter online.“Democrats have owned online fund-raising, and that is no longer true,” said former Representative Tom Davis, who previously led the House Republican campaign arm. “Republicans now are the ones who are obsessed and aroused. People voted for Biden to get Trump out of their living rooms. But they didn’t vote for all his policies.”Most Republican strategists hope to keep the focus on Democrats, knowing voters typically want to put a check on those in power. But Mr. Trump’s continued insistence on making his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen a central rallying cry for the G.O.P. — “If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020,” Mr. Trump warned in a statement this week, “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24” — is a complicating factor.“If it’s a referendum on Biden’s policies, we will do very well,” Mr. Graham said of the 2022 midterms. “If it’s looking back, if it’s a grievance campaign, then we could be in trouble.”Mr. Emmer tried to distance himself from Mr. Trump’s remarks, saying, “He’s a private citizen, and he, of course, is entitled to his own opinion.” Still, Mr. Emmer added that he was “honored” that the former president would headline the committee’s fall fund-raising dinner. “He remains the biggest draw in our party,” he said.Congressional leaders are the other leading party fund-raisers. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican minority leader, and his top deputy, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, have transferred a combined total of nearly $30 million to their party committees this year, party officials said.Mr. Scalise’s top donations since July included $105,000 from the PAC of Koch Industries; $125,000 from H. Fisk Johnson, the chief executive of S.C. Johnson & Son; and $66,300 from John W. Childs, the private equity magnate.Whether this is the final term of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is 81, is widely discussed in Washington. But the San Francisco Democrat remains a prolific fund-raiser.Donors to her political accounts in recent months include Haim Saban, the media investor ($263,400); Hamilton James, a top Blackstone executive ($263,000); Gwendolyn Sontheim Meyer, the Cargill heiress ($263,400); and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood producer ($163,400).Senator Chuck Schumer has aggressively pressed top party fund-raisers in recent months.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesSenator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, raised heavily both for his own 2022 re-election bid in New York and to maintain the Democratic majority. Mr. Schumer has aggressively pressed top party fund-raisers in recent months, telling one that he wanted to fill his war chest (now at $31.9 million) as a deterrent to any primary challenge from the left. He specifically named Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York as the kind of candidate he would like to keep from running, mostly to avoid weakening his hand while navigating the evenly divided Senate. Mr. Schumer’s office declined to comment.Notably, some of the top fund-raisers in both parties are Black.They include Mr. Warnock, the top Democratic fund-raiser, and Mr. Walker, a leading Republican in the Georgia Senate race. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the lone Black Republican in the Senate, was the top fund-raiser in his party. Mr. Scott raised $8.3 million in the third quarter. He now has $18.8 million in the bank, funds that can be used for his 2022 re-election or to seed a potential 2024 presidential run.Representative Val Demings, a Black Democrat in Florida and a former Orlando police chief, is challenging Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican incumbent, and was another top fund-raiser, pulling in $8.4 million. But she spent heavily to do so: $5.6 million.Florida has proved elusive for Democratic candidates, especially in recent years, and some party strategists are already quietly grumbling about the tens of millions — if not more — that is likely to be poured in to a tough race, especially after hundreds of millions of dollars was spent on losing 2020 efforts to topple Republican incumbents in Maine, Iowa, North Carolina and South Carolina.Rachel Shorey contributed reporting. More

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      The Democrats Are in Danger of a Midterm Rout

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      The Democrats are staring down real danger.They just aren’t getting enough done. They aren’t moving quickly enough on President Biden’s major campaign promises.The warning signs are all around.Democrats are still wrangling over their infrastructure and social spending bills. And the longer the fight drags on, the uglier it looks. Washington watchers are right — to a degree — to say that this is simply the way that large legislation is worked through. It’s a slog.In the end, I believe that the Democrats will have no choice but to pass something, no matter the size, because the consequence of failure is suicide. Democrats must go into the midterms with something that they can call a win, with something that at least inches closer to the transformations Biden has promised.But the budget isn’t the only issue.There is still a crisis at the border. In August, the Pew Research Center noted that the U.S. Border Patrol had reported “nearly 200,000 encounters with migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border in July, the highest monthly total in more than two decades.”That’s the largest number since Bill Clinton was president.The handling of Haitian immigrants was a particular blight on the administration, and the images of officers cracking their reins like whips will be hard to erase from memory.Furthermore, the Senate parliamentarian has advised Democrats against including a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants in their spending bill. It is not clear if Senate Democrats will try to get around the parliamentarian’s nonbinding ruling, but 92 legal scholars have called on them to do just that.As for police reform, negotiations on that legislation completely fell apart with customary finger-pointing as the epilogue.The president has said that, “The White House will continue to consult with the civil rights and law enforcement communities, as well as victims’ families to define a path forward, including through potential further executive actions I can take to advance our efforts to live up to the American ideal of equal justice under law.”But executive orders are severely limited when it comes to state and local policing, and any order one president issues can be rescinded by the next.Then there is the massive, widespread assault on voting rights rolling out across the country, what some have rightly referred to as Jim Crow 2.0.As the Brennan Center for Justice put it earlier this month, “In an unprecedented year so far for voting legislation, 19 states have enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for Americans to vote.”And yet, it is still not clear if there are enough votes in the Senate to pass voter protections, Senator Joe Manchin hasn’t agreed to change filibuster rules which would allow Democrats to pass the legislation on their own, and Biden has yet to throw his full weight behind the fight to preserve the franchise from Republican assaults.Not to mention that Covid is still killing far too many Americans. The surge of cases during Biden’s first year ate away at any optimism about the development and administration of vaccines.Democrats have been unable to deliver much to make their voters happy, and their major agenda items have been stalled in Congress for so long that many of those voters are growing impatient and disillusioned.As a result, many recent polls have shown Biden’s approval ratings plummeting to the lowest level of his young presidency: According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 38 percent of respondents approved of Biden’s job performance, but 53 percent disapproved.More than half disapproved of his handling of the economy, the military, taxes, and foreign policy, and nearly 70 percent disapproved of his approach to immigration reform and the situation at the Mexican border. Only his handling of Covid received a smaller disapproval rating, of 50 percent.As Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy put it, “Battered on trust, doubted on leadership, and challenged on overall competency, President Biden is being hammered on all sides as his approval rating continues its downward slide to a number not seen since the tough scrutiny of the Trump administration.”Black voters continue to be Biden’s strongest supporters on many of these metrics, but even their support seems disturbingly soft.Maybe the Democrats will pass a massive spending bill and tout it well, and people will forget their disappointment on other issues and revel in the mound of cash the Democrats plan to spend. Maybe. There is no doubt that this country desperately needs the investments Democrats want to make. In fact, it needs even more investment than the amount Democrats have proposed.But even if they succeed in passing both the infrastructure framework and the social spending bill, those investments may come too late to discharge growing dissatisfaction. An unpopular president with slipping approval numbers is an injured leader with little political capital to burn.Biden is better than Trump, but that’s not enough. People didn’t just vote for Biden to vanquish a villain; they also wanted a champion. That champion has yet to emerge.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      David Shor Is Telling Democrats What They Don’t Want to Hear

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      President Biden’s agenda is in peril. Democrats hold a bare 50 seats in the Senate, which gives any member of their caucus the power to block anything he or she chooses, at least in the absence of Republican support. And Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are wielding that leverage ruthlessly.But here’s the truly frightening thought for frustrated Democrats: This might be the high-water mark of power they’ll have for the next decade.Democrats are on the precipice of an era without any hope of a governing majority. The coming year, while they still control the House, the Senate and the White House, is their last, best chance to alter course. To pass a package of democracy reforms that makes voting fairer and easier. To offer statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. To overhaul how the party talks and acts and thinks to win back the working-class voters — white and nonwhite — who have left them behind the electoral eight ball. If they fail, they will not get another chance. Not anytime soon.[Get more from Ezra Klein by listening to his Opinion podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show.”]That, at least, is what David Shor thinks. Shor started modeling elections in 2008, when he was a 16-year-old blogger, and he proved good at it. By 2012, he was deep inside President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, putting together the fabled “Golden Report,” which modeled the election daily. The forecast proved spookily accurate: It ultimately called the popular vote within one-tenth of a percentage point in every swing state but Ohio. Math-geek data analysts became a hot item for Democratic Party campaigns, and Shor was one of the field’s young stars, pioneering ways to survey huge numbers of Americans and experimentally test their reactions to messages and ads.But it was a tweet that changed his career. During the protests after the killing of George Floyd, Shor, who had few followers at the time, tweeted, “Post-MLK-assassination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2 percent, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon.” Nonviolent protests, he noted, tended to help Democrats electorally. The numbers came from Omar Wasow, a political scientist who now teaches at Pomona College. But online activists responded with fury to Shor’s interjection of electoral strategy into a moment of grief and rage, and he was summarily fired by his employer, Civis Analytics, a progressive data science firm.For Shor, cancellation, traumatic though it was, turned him into a star. His personal story became proof of his political theory: The Democratic Party was trapped in an echo chamber of Twitter activists and woke staff members. It had lost touch with the working-class voters of all races that it needs to win elections, and even progressive institutions dedicated to data analysis were refusing to face the hard facts of public opinion and electoral geography.A socially distanced arrangement for state delegates at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFreed from a job that didn’t let him speak his mind, Shor was resurrected as the Democratic data guru who refused to soften an analysis the left often didn’t want to hear. He became ubiquitous on podcasts and Twitter, where Obama posts his analyses and pundits half-jokingly refer to themselves as being “Shor-pilled.” Politico reported that Shor has “an audience in the White House and is one of the most in-demand data analysts in the country,” calling his following “the cult of Shor.” Now he is a co-founder of and the head of data science at Blue Rose Research, a progressive data science operation. “Obviously, in retrospect,” he told me, “it was positive for my career.”At the heart of Shor’s frenzied work is the fear that Democrats are sleepwalking into catastrophe. Since 2019, he’s been building something he calls “the power simulator.” It’s a model that predicts every House and Senate and presidential race between now and 2032 to try to map out the likeliest future for American politics. He’s been obsessively running and refining these simulations over the past two years. And they keep telling him the same thing.We’re screwed in the Senate, he said. Only he didn’t say “screwed.”In 2022, if Senate Democrats buck history and beat Republicans by four percentage points in the midterms, which would be a startling performance, they have about a 50-50 chance of holding the majority. If they win only 51 percent of the vote, they’ll likely lose a seat — and the Senate.But it’s 2024 when Shor’s projected Senate Götterdämmerung really strikes. To see how bad the map is for Democrats, think back to 2018, when anti-Trump fury drove record turnout and handed the House gavel back to Nancy Pelosi. Senate Democrats saw the same huge surge of voters. Nationally, they won about 18 million more votes than Senate Republicans — and they still lost two seats. If 2024 is simply a normal year, in which Democrats win 51 percent of the two-party vote, Shor’s model projects a seven-seat loss, compared with where they are now.Sit with that. Senate Democrats could win 51 percent of the two-party vote in the next two elections and end up with only 43 seats in the Senate. You can see Shor’s work below. We’ve built a version of his model, in which you can change the assumptions and see how they affect Democrats’ projected Senate chances in 2022 and 2024. More

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      Jan. 6 Was Worse Than It Looked

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      However horrifying the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol appeared in the moment, we know now that it was far worse.The country was hours away from a full-blown constitutional crisis — not primarily because of the violence and mayhem inflicted by hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters but because of the actions of Mr. Trump himself.In the days before the mob descended on the Capitol, a corollary attack — this one bloodless and legalistic — was playing out down the street in the White House, where Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and a lawyer named John Eastman huddled in the Oval Office, scheming to subvert the will of the American people by using legal sleight-of-hand.Mr. Eastman’s unusual visit was reported at the time, but a new book by the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa provides the details of his proposed six-point plan. It involved Mr. Pence rejecting dozens of already certified electoral votes representing tens of millions of legally cast ballots, thus allowing Congress to install Mr. Trump in a second term.Mr. Pence ultimately refused to sign on, earning him the rage of Mr. Trump and chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” by the rioters, who erected a makeshift gallows on the National Mall.The fact that the scheme to overturn the election was highly unlikely to succeed is cold comfort. Mr. Trump remains the most popular Republican in the country; barring a serious health issue, the odds are good that he will be the party’s nominee for president in 2024. He also remains as incapable of accepting defeat as he has ever been, which means the country faces a renewed risk of electoral subversion by Mr. Trump and his supporters — only next time they will have learned from their mistakes.That leaves all Americans who care about preserving this Republic with a clear task: Reform the federal election law at the heart of Mr. Eastman’s twisted ploy, and make it as hard as possible for anyone to pull a stunt like that again.The Electoral Count Act, which passed more than 130 years ago, was Congress’s response to another dramatic presidential dispute — the election of 1876, in which the Republican Rutherford Hayes won the White House despite losing the popular vote to his Democratic opponent, Samuel Tilden.After Election Day, Tilden led in the popular vote and in the Electoral College. But the vote in three Southern states — South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana — was marred by accusations of fraud and intimidation by both parties. Various officials in each state certified competing slates of electors, one for Hayes and one for Tilden. The Constitution said nothing about what to do in such a situation, so Congress established a 15-member commission to decide which electors to accept as valid.The commission consisted of 10 members of Congress, evenly divided between the parties, and five Supreme Court justices, two appointed by Democrats and three by Republicans. Hayes, the Republican candidate, won all the disputed electors (including one from Oregon) by an 8-to-7 vote — giving him victory in the Electoral College by a single vote.Democrats were furious and began to filibuster the counting process, but they eventually accepted Hayes’s presidency in exchange for the withdrawal of the last remaining federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction and beginning the era of Jim Crow, which would last until the middle of the 20th century.It was obvious that Congress needed clearer guidelines for deciding disputed electoral votes. In 1887, the Electoral Count Act became law, setting out procedures for the counting and certifying of electoral votes in the states and in Congress.But the law contains numerous ambiguities and poorly drafted provisions. For instance, it permits a state legislature to appoint electors on its own, regardless of how the state’s own citizens voted, if the state “failed to make a choice” on Election Day. What does that mean? The law doesn’t say. It also allows any objection to a state’s electoral votes to be filed as long as one senator and one member of the House put their names to it, triggering hours of debate — which is how senators like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley were able to gum up the works on Jan. 6.A small minority of legal scholars have argued that key parts of the Electoral Count Act are unconstitutional, which was the basis of Mr. Eastman’s claim that Mr. Pence could simply disregard the law and summarily reject electors of certain key battleground states.Nothing in the Constitution or federal law gives the vice president this authority. The job of the vice president is to open the envelopes and read out the results, nothing more. Any reform to the Electoral Count Act should start there, by making it explicit that the vice president’s role on Jan. 6 is purely ministerial and doesn’t include the power to rule on disputes over electors.The law should also be amended to allow states more time to arrive at a final count, so that any legal disputes can be resolved before the electors cast their ballots.The “failed” election provision should be restricted to natural disasters or terrorist attacks — and even then, it should be available only if there is no realistic way of conducting the election. Remember that the 2012 election was held just days after Hurricane Sandy lashed the East Coast, and yet all states were able to conduct their elections in full. (This is another good argument for universal mail-in voting, which doesn’t put voters at the mercy of the weather.) The key point is that a close election, even a disputed one, is not a failed election.Finally, any objection to a state’s electoral votes should have to clear a high bar. Rather than just one member of each chamber of Congress, it should require the assent of one-quarter or more of each body. The grounds for an objection should be strictly limited to cases involving clear evidence of fraud or widespread voting irregularities.The threats to a free and fair presidential election don’t come from Congress alone. Since Jan. 6, Republican-led state legislatures have been clambering over one another to pass new laws making it easier to reject their own voters’ will, and removing or neutralizing those officials who could stand in the way of a naked power grab — like Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, did when he resisted Mr. Trump’s personal plea to “find” just enough extra votes to flip the outcome there.How to ensure that frivolous objections are rejected while legitimate ones get a hearing? One approach would be to establish a panel of federal judges in each state to hear any challenges to the validity or accuracy of that state’s election results. If the judges determine that the results are invalid, they would lay out their findings in writing and prevent the state from certifying its results.There is plenty more to be done to protect American elections from being stolen through subversion, like mandating the use of paper ballots that can be checked against reported results. Ideally, fixes like these would be adopted promptly by bipartisan majorities in Congress, to convey to all Americans that both parties are committed to a fair, transparent and smooth vote-counting process. But for that to happen, the Republican Party would need to do an about-face. Right now, some Republican leaders in Congress and the states have shown less interest in preventing election sabotage than in protecting and, in some cases, even venerating the saboteurs.Democrats should push through these reforms now, and eliminate the filibuster if that’s the only way to do so. If they hesitate, they should recall that a majority of the Republican caucus in the House — 139 members — along with eight senators, continued to object to the certification of electoral votes even after the mob stormed the Capitol.Time and distance from those events could have led to reflection and contrition on the part of those involved, but that’s not so. Remember how, in the frantic days before Jan. 6, Mr. Trump insisted over and over that Georgia’s election was rife with “large-scale voter fraud”? Remember how he called on Mr. Raffensperger to “start the process of decertifying the election” and “announce the true winner”? Only those words aren’t from last year. They appear in a letter Mr. Trump sent to Mr. Raffensperger two weeks ago.Mr. Trump may never stop trying to undermine American democracy. Those who value that democracy should never stop using every measure at their disposal to protect it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Grassley Will Run for 8th Term in Senate

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      Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican in the Senate, announced Friday on Twitter that he would seek an eighth term, relieving Republicans worried about a bitter primary fight that could put the seat at risk.Mr. Grassley, who turned 88 last week and would be 95 at the end of his term, sought to emphasize his fitness in disclosing his plans that will draw attention because of his age. A tweet showed an alarm clock turning to 4 a.m. and Mr. Grassley jogging in the early morning darkness.“It’s 4 a.m. in Iowa so I’m running,” said Mr. Grassley, a habitual jogger. “I do that 6 days a week.”In a separate release, Mr. Grassley, first elected to public office as a state legislator in 1958, said that he has been encouraged to run by Iowans as he toured the state in recent months.“I’m working as hard as ever for the people of Iowa and there’s more work to do,” he said in a statement. “In a time of crisis and polarization, Iowa needs strong, effective leadership.”Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, had joined his colleagues in encouraging Mr. Grassley to run to head off a primary fight to succeed him. A bitter Republican primary could have provided an opening for Democrats to pick up a seat in what will be an intense battle next year for the Senate majority. Former Democratic Representative Abby Finkenauer, 32, who lost her re-election bid last year, has already announced she would seek the seat held by Mr. Grassley.Elected to the Senate in 1980 when Ronald Reagan won the presidency, Mr. Grassley has used his seniority to preside as chairman of both the Senate Finance Committee and the Judiciary Committee, where he was instrumental in advancing President Donald J. Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court and also blocking President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick B. Garland. He easily won re-election in 2016 even though Democrats aggressively sought to topple him because of his refusal to take up the Garland nomination.Mr. Grassley was known for bipartisanship earlier in his career but became increasingly conservative as his state also shifted ideologically to the right. During the Obama presidency, Mr. Grassley engaged in negotiations with Democrats over the health care law but pulled out under a Republican backlash to his work with Democrats. He was a leading proponent of a criminal justice overhaul crafted with Democrats and signed into law by Mr. Trump.As the senior Senate Republican, Mr. Grassley was third in line to succession of the president when Republicans held the Senate majority, following the vice president and speaker of the House. He would not be the oldest Republican senator ever if he served his full eighth term. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was 100 when he left the Senate in 2002. More

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      Debunking the Pro-Trump Right’s Claims About the Jan. 6 Riot

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      A rally scheduled for Saturday in Washington is intended to continue a Republican effort to rewrite the narrative of the assault on the Capitol. The facts undercut their assertions.In the eight months since a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, some Republicans have tried to build a case — belied by the facts — that the vast federal investigation of the riot has been essentially unfair, its targets the victims of political persecution.The people charged in the Jan. 6 attack are “being persecuted so unfairly,” former President Donald J. Trump said in a statement on Thursday.That sentiment is the organizing principle behind the rally scheduled in Washington on Saturday, billed as “Justice for J6.” According to the permit application submitted by the organizers, a group called Look Ahead America, the event is meant to “bring awareness and attention to the unjust and unethical treatment of nonviolent Jan. 6 political prisoners.”The rally is the latest effort in the right’s continuing attempt to rewrite the history of the mob attack on Congress, which prosecutors say led to as many as 1,000 assaults against the police and sought to disrupt certification of President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.Here is what the facts say about assertions from those seeking to promote a false narrative about Jan. 6.The rioters weren’t just tourists who now face excessive criminal charges.One of the first claims that pro-Trump conservatives made about Jan. 6 was that the rioters were little more than tourists and that those arrested were victims of prosecutorial overreach. Representative Andrew Clyde, Republican of Georgia, described the scene at the Capitol that day as “a normal tourist visit,” implying that hundreds of people taken into custody were facing excessive charges.But, in fact, nearly half of the more than 600 people charged have been accused only of misdemeanors like trespassing and disorderly conduct, rather than more serious felonies.At this point, more than 50 of these low-level defendants have pleaded guilty. All of them will serve prison terms of six months or less, or no time at all — fairly modest sentences for the federal penal system. But even when the authorities have agreed to lenient penalties, they have still insisted that no one who broke into the Capitol is innocent.“A riot cannot occur without rioters,” prosecutors wrote in a recent memo proposing no jail time for Valerie Ehrke, a California woman who only spent one minute in the building. “And rioter’s actions — from the most mundane to the most violent — contributed, directly and indirectly, to the violence and destruction of that day.”The government hasn’t widely detained nonviolent protesters.At an event last month hosted by Republican officials in his home state of North Carolina, Representative Madison Cawthorn repeated an oft-heard myth. He complained that hundreds of people taken into custody after Jan. 6 were “political hostages.”The truth is that about 15 percent of those arrested so far in connection with the riot have been denied bail and remain in pretrial custody — much lower than the overall federal pretrial detention rate of 75 percent. Moreover, all of those being detained on charges related to Jan. 6 are facing serious charges like assault or obstruction of Congress; none have been accused of only misdemeanors.Far from jailing everyone, in fact, judges have granted bail to numerous defendants accused of violent attacks on the police or of belonging to extremist groups like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers militia.There are a handful of cases in which people have been denied bail without having engaged in physical violence, but those are the exceptions to the rule.This week, a lawyer for Ethan Nordean, a leader of the Proud Boys, complained in court that his client has been in jail for months not because of anything he personally did on Jan. 6, but rather because he is a member of a reviled political organization.Judge Timothy J. Kelly, who was appointed to the federal bench by Mr. Trump, responded that the law alone was guiding Mr. Nordean’s case.“Politics has nothing to do with it,” Judge Kelly said. “Not one whit.”Capitol Police officers preparing riot equipment at the Capitol before the rally on Saturday.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesJan. 6 defendants haven’t been treated more harshly than racial justice protesters.The assertion has become a staple on the right: Trump supporters were charged with violent crimes in the Capitol attack because of their conservative beliefs while many leftist activists had similar charges stemming from the racial justice protests last year in cities like Portland, Ore., reduced or dismissed.This summer, a Jan. 6 defendant named Garret Miller filed court papers making that argument. Mr. Miller, who lives in Dallas, claimed he had been “treated differently by the government than the Portland rioters based upon the politics involved,” his lawyer wrote.In rebutting these claims, the government argued there was no comparison between the protests last year prompted by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the storming of the Capitol. While prosecutors acknowledged that those arrested during weeks of unrest at the Portland federal courthouse had committed “serious offenses,” they insisted that the rioters in Washington were involved in “a singular and chilling event” that threatened not only the Capitol but also “democracy itself.”Trying to explain why many cases in the racial justice protests were eventually dismissed, prosecutors also said they have much better evidence against Capitol rioters like Mr. Miller than they ever had against protesters in Portland. Among the material they collected after Jan. 6 were thousands of hours of video footage from surveillance and body cameras worn by the police, and hundreds of thousands of social media posts.A few months after Mr. Miller filed his claims, The Associated Press published an analysis of more than 300 criminal cases stemming from the protests incited by Mr. Floyd’s murder. The analysis undercut the argument that pro-Trump defendants were treated more harshly than Black Lives Matter protesters, showing that many leftist rioters had received substantial sentences.There’s no evidence that Jan. 6 defendants are being treated worse than others in jail.Perhaps the loudest grievances about Capitol defendants concern the jail conditions of those denied bail.The accusations have been many and wide-ranging. Some defendants have complained of being locked in their cells for 23 hours a day in what amounts to solitary confinement. Others have claimed that they have been denied the right to hold religious services and that their hygiene needs have been restricted.One defendant, charged with assaulting the police, has said that he was zip-tied and then “savagely” beaten by a correctional officer in the District of Columbia jail, according to his lawyer. The assault resulted in a broken nose, a dislocated jaw and the loss of sight in the man’s right eye.Jail, of course, is a terrible place to be, regardless of one’s politics. But at least so far, no one has offered evidence that the authorities have imposed harsh conditions on Jan. 6 defendants because of their political beliefs.A spokeswoman for the District of Columbia jail said the 23-hour lockdown was not imposed solely on the Capitol defendants but was a medical provision used throughout the jail to curb the spread of the coronavirus. It has recently been lifted, she said.The Justice Department is using a novel charge in some cases.Prosecutors have taken a legal risk in the way they have chosen to prosecute scores of Capitol cases. The potential problem concerns the use of a federal obstruction law to charge people with disrupting Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote. Lawyers for some of the defendants are challenging the Justice Department in court over use of the law, but pro-Trump activists have yet to make it a big public issue.Instead of using politically fraught and hard-to-prove charges like sedition or insurrection to describe the attempt to block certification of the election results, the Justice Department used a much more measured — albeit novel — law: obstruction of an official proceeding.The law is not a perfect match for what happened on Jan. 6; indeed, it had never before been used in a situation like the Capitol attack.Passed in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a corporate overhaul law, the measure was devised to prohibit things like shredding documents or tampering with witnesses. Several lawyers have filed papers arguing that the law does not apply to the riot at the Capitol. Two federal judges have signaled that they might agree and could decide to toss the charge for more than 200 defendants.The Justice Department’s use of the obstruction law is arguably the most political move prosecutors have made to date. After all, as some defense lawyers have noted, the government did not use the same charge in 2018 when left-wing activists swarmed the Capitol to protest the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. More